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Monthly Archives

August 2018

The Linux Foundation: Linux Foundation Continues Growing at More Than a Member a Day With Addition of Fifty-One Silver and Associate Members in One Month

By EdgeX Foundry, In the News

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, announced the addition of 47 Silver members and 4 Associate members in the month of July. Linux Foundation members help support development of the shared technology resources, while accelerating their own innovation through open source leadership and participation. Linux Foundation member contributions help provide the infrastructure and resources that enable the world’s largest open collaboration communities.

“We continue to be amazed at the consistent growth in support for the open source community from across an enormous variety of industries, with an average of more than one member joining The Linux Foundation each day in 2018,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation. “From automotive to entertainment to finance and more, open source has become pervasive in society. These new members have made a commitment to contribute the resources and support that enables the community to build and innovate.”

In addition to joining the Foundation, many of the new members have joined Linux Foundation projects like the Academy Software Foundation, Akraino Edge Stack, Automotive Grade Linux, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, EdgeX Foundry, Hyperledger, LF Deep Learning, and LF Networking.

Read more at The Linux Foundation.

Dell Technologies: Dell Technologies Announces New IoT Solutions to Automate Powerful, Actionable Insights

By EdgeX Foundry, In the News

Dell Technologies’ Edge and IoT Solutions Division is announcing new solutions and bundles to simplify deployment of secure, scalable solutions for edge computing and IoT use cases. With these solutions, Dell Technologies is combining tools from its broad portfolio with technology from Intel and partners in the Dell Technologies IoT Solutions Partner Program. This will drive workloads for computer vision – enabled by imaging sensors – and machine intelligence – characterized by structured telemetry from sensors and control systems. Dell Technologies has collaborated with Intel, who has helped advance these solutions with their computer vision and analytics technologies.

Read more at Dell Technologies.

Linux.com: Open Source Akraino Edge Computing Project Leaps Into Action

By EdgeX Foundry, In the News

The ubiquitous topic of edge computing has so far primarily focused on IoT and machine learning. A new Linux Foundation project called Akraino Edge Stack intends to standardize similar concepts for use on edge telecom and networking systems in addition to IoT gateways. The goal to build an “open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications,” says the project.

Read more at Linux.com.

Akraino Edge Stack Moves into Execution with Project Governance Formation and Ecosystem Growth

By Akraino, Announcement

Under The Linux Foundation, new open source project at the edge gathers momentum to support broad range of Telco, Enterprise, and Industrial IoT use cases

San Francisco – August 20, 2018 — The Akraino Edge Stack, a Linux Foundation project creating an open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications, today announced it has has moved from formation into execution. The project welcomes members Arm, AT&T, Dell EMC, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel Corporation, inwinSTACK, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Qualcomm, Radisys, Red Hat, and Wind River as it solidifies its governing structure and begins technical documentation.

The Akraino Edge Stack is designed to improve the state of edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, OTT edge, and carrier edge networks. It will offer users new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, to maximize the applications and functions supported at the edge, and to help ensure the reliability of systems that must be up at all times.

“Since forming earlier this year, the Akraino Edge Stack project has generated strong industry support and is now well-positioned to create blueprints optimized for various edge use cases,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking and Orchestration, The Linux Foundation. “We are pleased to welcome leading members with a broad swath of edge expertise and resources to collaborate on improving the state of open source edge software.”

The community has established a lightweight governance structure that welcomes technical contributions from all participants. The Technical Steering Committee (TSC), responsible for setting the technical direction of the project, is composed of active committers within the community with no prerequisite of financial contribution. The Governing Board, comprised of one representative from each member organization, is responsible for general oversight and will hold its first meeting later this month.

Akraino Edge Stack will support a broad range of Telco, Enterprise, and Industrial Edge use cases, with a focus on creating blueprints that will consist of validated hardware and software configurations against defined use case and performance specifications.  Work has already begun to create these use case- based blueprints, with technical details now available on the project wiki. In addition, the community aims to tackle API definition where gaps exist to achieve edge use case objectives.

The growing community will come together August 23-24 in Middletown, NJ for the Akraino Edge Stack Developer Summit. Hosted by AT&T Labs, the 1.5 day event will focus on technical discussion of the project with sessions on blueprints, seed code, architecture and more.

Akraino Edge Stack seed code will be opened up to the community this week based on AT&T’s seed code, (the Network Cloud blueprint,) contributed to The Linux Foundation. To learn more and register to attend and help shape the future of the edge, visit https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/akraino-edge-stack-developer-summit/.

Comments from Akraino Edge Stack Board Members

“The edge of tomorrow’s network will enable a trillion connected devices and be defined by power efficiency, performance, and flexibility, fundamental hallmarks of Arm-based solutions,” said Mohamed Awad, vice president of marketing, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “Our collaboration within the Akraino Edge Stack project will showcase how the Arm ecosystem has architected solutions specifically tailored to meet the demands of distributed computing at the network edge.”

“We welcome the new members to the Akraino Edge Stack project. As a community, we can expand the development of next gen zero-touch edge cloud infrastructure for carrier and enterprise networks, and foster a new ecosystem of applications that demand high performance, ultra-low latency and blazing speed,” said Mazin Gilbert, vice president of Advanced Technology & Systems, AT&T. “Embracing open interfaces and collaboration with edge computing will expedite new solutions and innovations for 5G services.”

“We fully embrace disaggregation as a means of driving innovation in communications service provider networks,” said Kevin Shatzkamer, vice president, Dell EMC Service Provider Solutions. “We see edge as the real enabler and onramp to the cloud and joined the Akraino Edge Stack project to help lead this important effort for customers to quickly scale edge cloud services.”

“Ericsson has a long history of leading standardization activities and open source projects for virtualization and cloud,” said Lars Mårtensson, head of Solution Area Cloud and NFV Infrastructure, Ericsson. “With the advent of 5G, we see clear business opportunities with the edge cloud use cases requiring distributed cloud capabilities across the network for enterprises, operators, OTT, IoT, and vertical applications. Distributed cloud will cater for lower latency, more efficient use of bandwidth, and enhanced security. The Akraino Edge Stack will play a key role in the evolution of distributed cloud. Ericsson has joined Akraino to work with the member community, thereby supporting the participating operators to develop an industry leading edge stack.”

“With the evolution of the digitalization and intelligent technologies in human society, edge computing will become the next focus in the industry,” said Bill Ren, VP, Network Industry & Ecosystem Development, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. “The rapid and healthy development of an ecosystem is the key to business sustainability. Huawei believes that the industry needs a unified full-stack framework to build a rich and open developer and application ecosystem, and that is why we are happy to be a co-founder of  the Akranio Edge Stacj community. We hope that the industry will work together to build an open, collaborative and win-win platform to build a smart society with all things connected.”

“The Akraino project helps fill a critical gap in the ecosystem by supporting the rapid scale of edge solutions across Industrial, Enterprise and Telco. We look forward to establishing Akraino as a blueprint, helping to form the foundation of known-good software and hardware configurations that the ecosystem can easily adopt to foster collaborative development across industries and speed innovation,” said Imad Sousou, corporate vice president and general manager of the Open Source Technology Center, Intel. “We highly anticipate a continued collaboration to realize the bright future that is edge computing.”

“Edge computing has become a key technology that enterprises and telecommunication companies are actively investing and promoting. As a major long-time contributor in open source technologies, inwinSTACK is excited to be a part of the Akraino project,” said Joseph Wang, Vice President, inwinSTACK Inc. “We believe the Akraino project will play an important role in developing a common standard for edge computing, and our partnership will strengthen our ability to deliver enterprise-grade edge cloud solutions to organizations seeking to drive business values and innovations.”

“As application use cases at the edge continue to emerge, the need for a lightweight, low-latency, secure edge stack that’s also easy to deploy and manage is becoming more and more clear,” said Randy Bias, vice president of Technology and Strategy for Cloud Software , Juniper Networks. “The goal of Akraino is to deliver that stack in an open model allowing both network operators and the enterprises that rely on them to innovate and differentiate further up the stack. Juniper is actively engaged with the communities that are supporting edge infrastructure and Akraino is an important part of that mix.”

“Nokia is excited to join the Akraino Edge Stack project to support the emerging edge cloud ecosystem across multiple industries,” said Antti Romppanen, head of Cloud Foundation Product Management, Nokia. “Nokia has a long experience with carrier grade edge stacks, being the first company to demonstrate radio access network functions on OpenStack cloud infrastructure and recently launching Nokia’s Open Edge server specifically targeting edge deployments. We are looking forward to sharing our experience in the Akraino project!”

“Mobile edge computing is a game-changer for service providers as it enables them to deliver applications with ultra-low latency requirements, to save backhaul costs, and to make intelligent and informed decisions based on data analytics and thereby better manage their networks,” said Neeraj Patel, vice president and general manager, Software and Services Solutions, Radisys. “While proprietary edge computing solutions exist, at Radisys we believe that open platforms and solutions at the edge are critical for multiple 5G, enterprise and IoT use cases, and we are proud to bring our expertise in RAN, edge architectures and open telecom solutions to the Akraino project. We look forward to collaborating with the Akraino community to enable open end-to-end edge solutions.”

“The edge, serverless and virtualized central office (VCO) are important to telecommunications service provider and enterprise customers alike, which is why Red Hat is excited to join and actively contribute to the Akraino project,” said Tom Nadeau, technical director, NFV, Red Hat. “The Akraino Edge Stack  project can represent a clearer path towards consistent, automated larger-scale deployments in these areas. We look forward to our collaboration with the Linux Foundation and the community.”

“Across multiple industries, we see companies increasingly leveraging virtualized edge solutions to reduce their operational costs and prepare for the explosion of 5G and IoT use cases by deploying secure, flexible software-based solutions as replacements to legacy, fixed-function hardware. Wind River is committed to working with the open source community to build critical infrastructure for the edge,” said Glenn Seiler, vice president of Product Management and Strategy for Software-defined Infrastructure,  Wind River. “We are looking forward to working with the Akraino Edge Stack project to accelerate edge solutions and integrate upstream components using a common framework for edge computing. Akraino will play an important role by building blueprints for a range of cross-industry use cases.”

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and industry adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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Securing the Edge with EdgeX Foundry’s California Code

By Blog, EdgeX Foundry

The recent EdgeX Foundry release, “California”, was the first to introduce security features built right into the platform. Operating on the edge means deploying hardware and running software outside the confines of well managed data centers, making IoT devices more vulnerable to exploitation by hackers. Our new security features make it easier to keep your data safe even when deploying solutions in insecure or untrusted environments.

The two new security services introduced in this release are the Security Secret Store, and the Security API Gateway. Between them they allow you to safely store sensitive information, such as encryption keys or authentication credentials, and restrict access to the data being processed by EdgeX to only authorized users and applications.

Security Secret Store

The Security Secret Store allows microservices to safely store and retrieve sensitive data that is only accessible after the secret store has been unlocked by an authorized service. Your secrets are encrypted both on disk (Consul backend) and during transport (TLS 1.2) to and from the Security Secret Store, ensuring that only the microservices that are authorized to access it can do so.

EdgeX Foundry uses Vault, by Hashicorp, as the reference implementation of the Security Secret Store. Vault provides a well tested secret storage solution with a failover architecture and flexible levels of control over access.

Security API Gateway

EdgeX Foundry is composed of a number of microservices that communicate with one another using standard networking protocols. This allows for a great amount of flexibility in how you deploy parts of the stack in your solution, but it also directly exposes the microservices to anybody who can connect to them. The new Security API Gateway provides a way for you to restrict outside access to your data by acting as a middleware between external applications and the EdgeX platform, requiring authentication before forwarding commands or read requests on to the relevant microservices.

EdgeX Foundry uses Kong as the reference implementation for the Security API Gateway.

For more information:

If you have questions or comments, visit the EdgeX Rocket.Chat and share your thoughts in the #community channel.

The Manufacturing Connection: Platform for Secure and Scalable Cloud-Native Edge Application Management

By EdgeX Foundry, In the News

Zededa announced early access to its platform that provides real-time apps a simple “on-ramp” to the cloud-native edge. From legacy embedded systems to modern, AI-based IoT apps, the platform provides the scalability, security and visibility required to allow operations teams to unlock the power of real-time apps without concerns about bandwidth, latency or dependency on the cloud.

Operations technology teams have three primary situations to deal with when it comes to IoT applications: how to upgrade and secure a massive install base of legacy embedded systems, how to retrofit existing equipment with IoT sensors and applications to take advantage of real-time data, and how to deploy entirely new applications like AI-powered robots and self-driving fleets.

Read more at The Manufacturing Connection.

Digital Journal: IOTech to Develop EdgeX Foundry Community Demonstrator

By EdgeX Foundry, In the News

IOTech, the IoT Edge Platform company, announced today it is in the process of developing an EdgeX Foundry™ community demonstrator. EdgeX Foundry supports a common IoT edge framework enabling an ecosystem of plug-and-play components that unifies the marketplace and makes it easier for developers to build, deploy, run and scale IoT solutions for industrial, enterprise and consumer applications.

This project is the first of several community demonstrators, which will be used to showcase the full capabilities of the EdgeX IoT Edge Platform across several use cases, and vertical markets. The first vertical market showcased will be Smart Buildings Automation and the first chance to see the demonstrator in action will be at IoT World Solutions Congress in Barcelona between the 16th -18th October 2018.

Read more at Digital Journal.

Smart City News: When the FBI Speaks the IoT Listens

By EdgeX Foundry, In the News

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been busy lately, given the overwhelming volume of cybersecurity threats, including attacks on the American democracy.

Most recently, the Feds issued a periodic “Public Service Announcements” (PSA) with an unusual twist:  a dire warning stating that cybercriminals are using the IoT for pivot attacks into full systems from vulnerable devices.

Read more at Smart City News.

Part 2: The Evolution of EdgeX’s User Interface

By Blog, EdgeX Foundry

Written by Vinoyang, EdgeX Foundry Technical Contributor and Tencent Big Data Engineer

This is the second part of the EdgeX User Interface blog. The first part of the blog focused on the work that was recently completed. You can read part 1 here. This blog will detail where we are now and where we’re headed with the next code release, named Delhi, later this year.

This blog will be divided into several sections:

1. Prepare for the participation of the community;

As mentioned earlier, the structure of the project is standardized, the details of the README file are enriched, the Make file is provided to improve the ease of use of the project, and the ongoing integration is to verify the validity of the community PR, etc..  All of this work helps insure we are ready to accept contributions from the EdgeX community.

Regarding continuous integration, I have been communicating with Jeremy Phelps of EdgeX Foundry’s DevOps working group. As with all of EdgeX, we hope to use Jenkins as the continuous integration tool for the new UI as well. In addition, we will integrate code quality inspection tools to protect the edgex-ui-go code quality.

2. Persist the data to the database and lay the foundation for subsequent database switching

As mentioned above, the data storage method implemented by edgex-ui-go is simple and a bit crude. It caches data in memory. As we all know, memory is volatile, and once power is lost, all data will be lost. Therefore, we must provide data persistence capabilities for the edgex-ui-go. We hope that the logic of edgex-ui-go maintains a loosely coupled relationship with its database, which will allow edgex-ui-go to switch between different databases according to user needs. So we implemented a data access interface (DAO for existing domain objects), and those who have worked on Java Web development should be familiar with this design pattern. Currently, I am developing a DAO implementation that interfaces with the  MongoDB database.

3. Using a classic three-tier architecture for the web backend

“Control/service/dao” is a classic three-tier architecture for Web backends. Its advantage is to implement a layered structure. We are also refactoring the code to use this design pattern.

4.  Reliable login verification

As we all know, security is a big problem that the Internet of Things faces. EdgeX Foundry also believes security is important. The TSC F2F conference in early June focused on security issues. The Edgex UI landing page may be one of the first and most critical interfaces for users to interact with EdgeX. So, we have to make sure that edgex-ui-go has a logical login authentication function.  I will be working with David Ferriera, chair of the Edgex Security Working Group to select and use one of multiple alternatives to provide user authentication.

5. Integration testing with the GoLang version of the microservices released by EdgeX California

The California version of EdgeX has been released.  The entire EdgeX Foundry community is excited, because this is the first version of EdgeX based on GoLang implementation (I was fortunate to have been a big participant in the development of the first version of EdgeX in GoLang). edgeX-ui-go is currently integrated to the old Java version of the EdgeX microservice. In this next refactoring effort , we are integrating and testing edgex-ui-go with the GoLang microservices. This will help improve consistency, integrity, stability and availability of the entire EdgeX ecosystem in GoLang.

6. Build a Docker image of edgex-ui-go

As with all EdgeX microservices, we need to containerize the edgex-ui-go for easy of deployment.  However, this is a lesser priority in our current work.

7. Fix some remaining bugs

At present, most of the base UI is working, but there are a few bugs to fix.  For example, the device profile cannot be upload as required, but we are working to solve these issues.

The EdgeX UI as part of the Delhi Release and Future Work

So what’s the plan for formally releasing the new UI?  The current work – and all the refactoring, is expected to be released with the Delhi Release of EdgeX (October 2018).

Beyond the current release there is more work to complete.  First, we want to push the front end of edgex-ui-go. At present, the front end of edgex-ui-go can be said to be very rudimentary, and data visualization capabilities are very limited. Currently I am researching and experimenting with an open source and powerful admin template named gentelella. Here is an example of the type of data visualization that gentelella can produce.

The reasons for using this type of UI tool are as follows:

  •      A feature-rich, elegant interface UI that will give user a good first impression of edgex
  •      Easy to use; which is important in a community were very few community members have professional front-end development experience, and most people only have experience in developing back-end languages
  •      A popular template capability that can save a lot of front-end workload, such as interface layout, settings, components (such as login, table, forms, uploads, downloads, etc.), and is created by many people with professional experience

We also hope to add support for more management and visualization of EdgeX itself. At present, edgex-ui-go provides only simple support of device onboarding, export client registration, rule configuration and other functions.  We hope to provide more and improved management capabilities to include better metadata management, scheduler management, log viewing, and more. At the same time, we expect to collect more EdgeX user needs for monitoring and visualization and incorporate those needs into future implementations.

Edgex-ui-go is part of the community effort. If you want to participate in EdgeX UI development, we welcome your comments, suggestions, bug fixes, code contributions and reviews. Find out more on our wiki page here

Or, you can visit EdgeX Rocket.Chat and share your thoughts in the #community channel.